


ordeal

by llassah



Series: slave to fate, kings, chance and desperate men [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, McCall Pack, Pack Dynamics, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llassah/pseuds/llassah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He closes the circle, and everything snaps into place. It’s just them. He looks at his own face, his own body, and all he really feels is tired. “Know thyself,” he says, and smiles at the nogitsune. Kira’s blade is heavy in his hands. It thrums with power, with promise. The nogitsune stares at the katana, eyes hungry, his face like a famine. The worst thing is, Stiles knows he looks the same. Probably worse. “I’m dying. If I die, you die. If you die, I die. There’s not enough time for the oni to get out, and no one on the field’s getting in. So what are we doing?”</em>
</p><p>What do you do after you've said your last words?</p>
            </blockquote>





	ordeal

He closes the circle, and everything snaps into place. It’s just them. He looks at his own face, his own body, and all he really feels is tired. “Know thyself,” he says, and smiles at the nogitsune. Kira’s blade is heavy in his hands. It thrums with power, with promise. The nogitsune stares at the katana, eyes hungry, his face like a famine. The worst thing is, Stiles knows he looks the same. Probably worse. “I’m dying. If I die, you die. If you die, I die. There’s not enough time for the oni to get out, and no one on the field’s getting in. So what are we doing?”

The nogitsune looks…charmed, a little. “They’re going to watch this, and they’re going to get you out. Try and protect you. All of them. Then they’ll die. You think they won’t break the line, once they can? Little lambs, they are. You think they’re not calling your father, Melissa? You think Allison isn’t going to try? Do you know why I chose you, Stiles?”

He’s not playing. Just waits for the nogitsune to keep talking.

“They love you. They play with their hearts, don’t think, and you, poor Stiles, you haven’t really been thinking, have you?”

He picks up the blade, unsheathes it. The oni still don’t move. He tests its weight. It feels unnatural in his hand, for all the power he can sense. Behind his back, he shows three fingers. Then two. “This is all about the self,” he says, and he throws the blade with the little strength he has, watches it land point first on the lacrosse field, about two yards from Kira. The nogitsune starts forward, something other than lazy enjoyment in his expression, some truth dawning and he’d love to monologue, show how clever he is. He honestly thought he’d use some witty banter, maybe say something meaningful, but his throat hurts and he’s tired of all this. Stiles shows one finger, closes his fist and puts his other hand out, and this time, this one time, he doesn’t flail and drop the object that’s thrown to him. The metal’s slightly warm in his grip, the end thudding lightly on the ground. “I think this is more my style,” he says, and he lifts it up, swings it just as the nogitsune gets close and this will probably kill him, but Derek had understood, Derek of all people knows about playing into a trap, about losing battles and futile gestures. Derek had kept his bat under his bed in the loft, had tracked him down, worked it out and he’d nodded when Stiles had told him he was dying, gripped his shoulder when he’d said he wanted it to mean something. Derek threw the bat and didn’t tell anyone what they’d planned.

The impact’s sickening. There’s none of the jarring thud that hitting a werewolf had given him, none of the shattering wood, the splinters flying out. There’s an impact, then a feeling of something giving way and he’d expected an explosion, something that would steal his breath, stop his heart, something that ended everything suddenly but he’s left with just the sound of a body hitting the floor, his panting harsh in his ears. The nogitsune’s eyes are glassy and there’s a thin line of blood trickling from his nose and he has to be sure, he _has to be_ so he hits him again, drops to his knees and brings the bat down on his own head, on the thing wearing his face. Every time he hits, it’s agony, but the only reason he stops is because he runs out of strength, his fingers too weak, too slippery to hold the bat.

Something flies out of the nogitsune’s mouth. It’s got red dotted on its wings. It lands on Stiles’s hand, his palm and he picks up the bat again, curls his palm around it and feels the crunch as the fly’s pressed between his skin and the metal. He kneels on the field, stares at his own corpse and wonders if he’ll feel happy about this at any point. The oni look at him, still waiting for something. “Go back to Noshiko. She’ll…she’ll look after you. I’d probably…I’d forget to feed you. I had a snake once. It didn’t end well. Damn. I…I need some better last words,” he gets out, uses his bat to break the line. The oni fade away with a whisper. The mark on his neck throbs. “Just you and me, buddy,” he says to his corpse. “So glad I’m the better looking one now.”

He doesn’t want to die next to the thing that killed him, so he looks up, looks for Scott. “Little help here, bro?” he calls out, and he wants to say sorry to Scott, wants to ask him to look out for his dad, but most of all he wants to be held close and tight, to be with his brother. To stop feeling cold. He holds his arms out and Scott just scoops him up so he feels like a _child_ , like he hasn’t killed people, like he’s still innocent and everything makes sense, and his head rests against Scott’s chest as Scott walks with him like he doesn’t weigh anything at all. “I love you,” he says. “Thank you for being my brother. I…no one could ask for a better one.”

Scott kisses him on the forehead. “I’m not letting you die. I’m—I’m your alpha,” he says, kneels down and puts his head on his lap. “I’ll call you back. I swear, Stiles, I will not—I can’t lose you.”

“Scott…I just wanna sleep. Want it to be over.”

Scott drapes his jacket over him, strokes his hair back from his forehead. Someone lifts up his legs, supports him and Derek sits next to Scott, legs stretched out under his torso. Allison and Lydia sit with his legs and feet in his lap. Isaac wraps one of his stupid scarves around Stiles’s neck and pats his chest with a smirk. Everything’s fading in and out. He can taste blood in his mouth. “It’s over,” Derek says, pulls off his jacket and puts it on Stiles’s legs, “and you’re alive. Call it a Christmas miracle. Ambulance should be here soon.”

He squints up at Derek. “You’re disgustingly chipper.”

“I like Christmas,” he says, and the last thing Stiles does before he slips under is flip him the bird. It’s more a last gesture than last words.

*

“I’m forming a club with Chris. It’s called the resurrected idiot children club. We’re gonna watch ice hockey and eat unhealthy food. Maybe compare guns, go fishing every third Saturday.”

He looks up at his dad. Can’t speak, there’s a breathing tube in, but he twitches the fingers on the hand closest to him. His dad’s hand’s warm in his. He squeezes it, drifts away with the scent of his dad’s aftershave overlaying the hospital smells.

*

“Those eyes aren’t lying. After all, how many times have I told you that your biggest mistake in underestimating the significance of people’s eyes. The tongue can conceal—hey, you’re awake,” Derek says, puts down the book. “You slept through the interesting parts.” He puts a hand on Stiles’s leg, rubs his thumb back and forth. “You’re getting stronger. They think you’ll be out in a couple of days. They’re taking the tube out soon, uh, they said other medical stuff when I eavesdropped but I didn’t understand a lot of it then they started talking about sinkholes in Florida, which are interesting but not right now.”

He’d kind of like to hear about the sinkholes. Derek opens his book again, starts reading as he closes his eyes.

*

Scott’s asleep, his head resting in Stiles’s lap, arms flung over the side of the bed. He’s breathing deeply. Stiles hasn’t moved. He’s scared to wake him. He’s getting scared to sleep, now that the tubes are out, and he knows it’s dumb, knows he’s not possessed any more, knows that he doesn’t have that force pulling his mind but the machines had been a tether, an extra precaution to stop him from leaving his bed, wreaking more chaos. His throat hurts from the tube. He can speak, but it’s hard. None of the doctors know quite what’s wrong with him, and the word that they keep using is ‘idiopathic’, which is one way of putting it. He strokes Scott’s shoulder, looks up at the ceiling. Tries not to be afraid as sleep takes him again. Scott’s there. He won’t let anything harm him.

*

“Dad?”

“I’m here, Stiles. How’re you?” his dad whispers. He’s not hooked up to any machines now. Everything’s quiet, hushed. He’d had a nightmare, feels shaky.

“I…I don’t know,” he admits. His dad strokes his hair back from his forehead, brushes his knuckles against his cheek.

“It’s okay. It’s okay not to know, kid,” his dad says softly.

“I killed someone,” he says, turns so he can see his dad in shadows, sitting in the uncomfortable chair.

“How…how did you feel?”

Stiles reaches out for his dad’s hand, is conscious of his cold, clammy grip. “Tired. I felt tired. I…thought I’d feel more. But I just wanted it all to stop.”

“ _Stiles,_ ” his dad chokes out, tugs him into an embrace that hurts, holds him close and tight as he buries his face in the side of his neck and shakes. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He lets himself believe that it’s true. If anyone can make it okay, it’s his dad.

*

“So, mostly my dad’s been making me eat red meat, kale and spinach. He was going to make Deaton give me a blood transfusion,” Allison says, sitting cross legged at the end of his bed. “He was kind of making me sound like a vampire.”

“You’d be an amazing vampire.”

She smiles like it’s an honest compliment, and it totally is, then looks at him, her smile softening. “It feels weird. Not being dead. I’d…we’d prepared for it,” she says, looking down at her fingers. “We’d decided to let go. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Form a club with Peter,” he says, because he loves the way she looks when she doesn’t know if she should smile. She pokes his foot, wraps a hand around his ankle.

“You’re still cold,” she murmurs. “You should—you’re getting stronger, you’re going home this afternoon, why are you still cold?”

He shrugs. “It’s better when people are around,” he says. “Makes it easier.”

She gets out her econ textbook, starts reading aloud.

*

Derek, Scott and Isaac are in his bedroom when he wakes up. Isaac’s asleep, slumped over his desk, Scott’s sitting in a chair next to his head, still awake, and Derek’s lurking behind Scott’s chair. It’s three in the morning, and he’s just had a nightmare. He breathes slowly, trying not to show them how scared he is, but Scott puts his hand on his bare wrist, draws some of the tightness in his chest off. Derek puts his hand on Scott’s shoulder, looks down at Stiles. He can’t see them clearly: he always finds it unnerving how much more werewolves can discern, how uneven the balance of information exchange is. He wants desperately to know how Scott’s holding up, how the dust’s settling, how everyone is, how they’re covering it up, where the body is. Wants to ask, and to know, to have so much information his head’s spinning with it.

He puts his fingers around Scott’s wrist too, imagines drawing his worry off. Slips into sleep as he imagines.

*

“Have you…have you been reading all your notes to me while I sleep?” he croaks, opens his eyes and squints up at her. She smiles, waving the stack of papers.

“I am not letting you losing your mind for a few months prevent me from having a worthy opponent for valedictorian,” she says briskly. “You’re alive, Stiles, and when your body catches up with reality, you’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She’s terrifying, and beautiful, and he has never loved her more than he does right now. It feels like setting something free. She brought her best friend back to life by sheer force of will; she stayed strong when something was trying its best to break her. She’s lived through more than he can imagine, and she’s still her, still flawed and frightening, young, scared and powerful. The light shines off her hair, gives her a halo, and her eyes are luminous in the thin afternoon sun. When she meets his gaze, it’s like she’s looking for something within him, testing him. When she nods once, satisfied, he feels something warm in his chest, something loosening incrementally because he’s alive, and in a few months, it could be something really good.

He looks at the baseball bat, propped against his desk, smiles slightly. He’ll be okay.         


End file.
